Do you Buffer?
Do you eat when you're bored? Do you drink against your own will? Do you get stuck in front of the TV for hours? Do you overspend? Are you checking Facebook all the time?
These are all forms of buffering.
Buffering is when we use external things to change how we feel emotionally. It’s something we do to keep from fully experiencing our lives, to hide from reality, to procrastinate, to not show up and face the music. We don’t want to face the truth of our lives because we don’t want to experience any type of negative emotion. We feel entitled to feel happiness and pleasure all of the time.
Buffering is something we do when we don't want to feel an unpleasant emotion. Buffering is using things that give us false pleasure in the moment.
When we buffer we change how we feel temporarily by using something external to distract ourselves and not feel our feelings, for example using food as a way to temporarily comfort ourselves. We are looking for instant relief without considering the long term impacts.
If you are trying to lose weight but you buffer with food or wine then the long term impact is no weight loss.
If you are trying to save money, but every time you feel lonely you go online and order a new pair of shoes, the long term impact is you don't save money.
And this applies to everything used to buffer - the more we spend, the more we want to spend; the more we eat, the more we want to eat; the more we drink, the more we want to drink - you get the picture. It becomes a perpetual issue in our lives because experiencing pleasure just makes us want to experience more pleasure.
What do we do if we wanted to change this?
First, we have to learn how to feel our emotions, to recognize when our emotions are making us do things we don't really want to do.
Second, we have to learn how to feel the emotion without doing something to hide or cover up the feeling.
Third, we have to learn to process these emotions. This means we do the work to figure out what the thoughts are that cause us to have these emotions because it is the thought, not the circumstance, that is creating the emotion.
Once the thought has been identified the work is to sit with the emotion without buffering to not feel it but to look at the though and come up with a different thought that gives you a better emotion.
Learning to do this takes time and practice. There is a tool called The Model I teach my clients to help them see their emotions and the thoughts that are creating them.
First, we have to learn how to feel our emotions, to recognize when our emotions are making us do things we don't really want to do.
Second, we have to learn how to feel the emotion without doing something to hide or cover up the feeling.
Third, we have to learn to process these emotions. This means we do the work to figure out what the thoughts are that cause us to have these emotions because it is the thought, not the circumstance, that is creating the emotion.
Once the thought has been identified the work is to sit with the emotion without buffering to not feel it but to look at the though and come up with a different thought that gives you a better emotion.
Learning to do this takes time and practice. There is a tool called The Model I teach my clients to help them see their emotions and the thoughts that are creating them.
If you want to learn about The Model and how to use it in your life to help you stop Buffering, click this link to schedule a No-charge No-obligation Consultation and let's chat LifeCoachingWithHeidi.com
What would your world be like if you didn’t seek the false pleasures of buffering and just went for a true, honest, authentic life?
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